Computer systems and associated peripheral devices are often operatively coupled to one another to enable electronic communication. This involves a network such as a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a portion of the Internet, or any combination thereof. Such computer systems conventionally comprise an operating system such as UNIX including without limitation variants of UNIX, WindowsNT, Windows98, Windows CE, and variants of Windows. Such computer systems further include application programs. These application programs may reside on such computer systems or may reside on one or more application servers for use on small computer systems.
Some application programs allow a computer system user to contemporaneously share electronic media with users of other computer systems (“application sharing”). This is conventionally referred to as, “What you see is what I see” (WYSIWIS). These programs conventionally comprise some level of conferencing capability. Such programs include without limitation NetMeeting from Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., and ProShare from Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. NetMeeting and ProShare each comprise an application sharing capability. WYSIWIS is a substantially real-time shared viewing on separate computer systems. By “substantially real-time shared viewing,” is meant WYSIWIS with some amount of propagation delay.
Unfortunately, these conferencing programs require knowledge on how to use them for conferencing and require knowledge on how to configure them for application sharing. For example, in NetMeeting, a document, if not already open, must be found and opened. This will open an associated application program. After which, NetMeeting must be found and opened. NetMeeting provides a capability of creating a list of names (a directory) or a list of numbers (speed dial list). So, either a name or a number is selected from a list for an instantiation of NetMeeting. After a connection is established, a share menu becomes available. The share menu lists open documents available for sharing. A presenter of a host computer system may then select a document to be shared with an audience member or members of a shadow computer system or systems. ProShare also requires knowledge of how to use it for conferencing and for sharing applications.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to enable a user to share applications without having to have any knowledge of an underlying application. Thus, an application-sharing interface is needed which is easier to use than those heretofore.